Why cannot I remove an image that I replaced in the picture frame in Publisher?

[Vosje]

Hello, there's something that I just can't figure out, could you maybe help me out? I have created a master page with an empty picture frame. Then I apply this master page to my pages and populate the picture frame by clicking on '"replace image" and that works fine. However, if I then wish to replace this image again with a different one, there seems to be no way for me to remove the old one. I click on "replace image" again, the new one will be loaded into the same picture frame, but the old image will still be there! Even if I try to remove it from the layers panel, I can't. It won't react at all, I cannot even make it invisible (the controls are greyed out), what am I doing wrong? How do I get rid of the old image? The only way for me to achieve this now is to completely clear the master style from the page, apply it again and then replace the empty picture frame with the new image.

Thanks!

[thomaso]

You can't select + delete the image layers because they are inside your master layer. With right-click on the master you can choose "Detach..." to get more access to the layers inside.

But actually 2 resource layers inside 1 picture frame appears strange. Can you upload this .afpub, possibly + the images, to take a look inside?

You could give the  current Beta v1.8.4  a try, it has some improvements for master page picture frames on document pages. Unfortunately still this Beta has issues, too, in particular the grayed-out visibility checkbox brings this thread to my mind:

 

 

[Vosje]

Hi, thanks for your reply. By "detach" do you mean "edit detached"? I wouldn't want to do that for the whole applied master page, because this means that I will loose the link with the master page and it won't get updated anymore when I apply changes to the master. So that's not a solution.

Look, I think it's really a bug, it seems like Publisher completely looses the link with an image once it was replaced but doesn't remove the old version from the file. Because I have just made a test file, images were originally orange-tinted when I inserted them in the picture frame. Then, I tried to swap the images and colored them differently, too, but the old version of the image is still there and it's still orange (eventhough it says it's linked). You don't see the new images because they are complerely covered by the old version. What you SHOULD see: blue and green images, but what you actually get to see: two orange images that are "stuck".

test1.afphoto test2.afphoto

test.afpub

[Wosven]

There's no problem replacing multiple times images in your file, using the Windows last Bêta (1.8.4.651) on Windows, each using the "replace image" button, using "linked" or "embedded" options.

[uneMule]

Il y a aussi cette possibilité...

*****

There is also this possibility...

[thomaso]

9 hours ago, Vosje said:

"edit detached"? I wouldn't want to do that for the whole applied master page, because this means that I will loose the link with the master page and it won't get updated anymore

If you experience this something is going wrong.
In APub you should be able to "Edit Detached" or "...Linked" at any time + quit the Detach mode with the "Finish" button without a change.

I assume your APub is corrupted. There are various quite odd spots in your file which make me assume so:

I recommend not to try to fix this file but to reproduce it newly from scratch with an entirely new .afpub.
(of cause without trying to reproduce issues like 2 resources in 1 frame)

Edited June 10, 2020 by thomaso
Correction: multiple objects inside a Picture Frame appear to be normally possible and no issue here.

[Wosven]

21 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I assume your APub is corrupted. There are various quite odd spots in your file which make me assume so:

The file provided works perfectly in the beta version or APub.

Perhaps the OP version of APub is older and bugged. I would suggest using the beta version, in which some bugs were fixed and where it's working properly.

[Vosje]

Wosven, thanks for checking this out for me, it's good to know that it seems to be fixed in 1.8.4. I'm using 1.8.3 (the latest official release).

thomaso, I have indeed noticed the same thing, maybe there is a bug in Publisher that doesn't let it properly update linked files when they're not updated automatically.

uneMule, I can't do what you suggest, Publisher won't update the link via resource manager. Here's my original thread about links not being updated properly: 

 

 

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Wosven said:

The file provided works perfectly in the beta version or APub.

What does NOT work in 1.8.3 which works in the Beta for you with this file?

10 hours ago, Vosje said:

the new one will be loaded into the same picture frame, but the old image will still be there! Even if I try to remove it from the layers panel, I can't. It won't react at all, I cannot even make it invisible (the controls are greyed out),

Sorry, I must correct my mind: apparently it IS possible to place multiple objects of various object types inside a picture frame:

Then only one of the items shows the square symbol on its thumbnail in the layers panel, this also is the only object which reacts to the size slider under the picture frame, while all items react on the "lock children" property. – Besides the question if such a layer construction is useful (compared to e.g. a group) it seems not to do any harm.

Also the grayed-out visibility checkbox of the Picture Frame is normal when the object is placed inside a master page object. Then detaching enables the use of this checkbox.

@Vosje, so I only still wonder whether you in fact make the experience that detaching the master layer destroys anything. Could you try this again and report in deatil what happens? Or possible make a screen-record when detaching and getting issues.

[Vosje]

@thomaso, thanks for getting back again! I have to correct myself about "edit detached". The thing is that I didn't actually try it before you suggested it, I merely assumed that my link will be broken because the link to the master does get broken when you edit a text frame that was originally placed on a master page. As in, if I apply a master to one of the pages, then type something inside the text frame and then decide to adjust the font in the MASTER page, the change will not affect the text frame on the page (while originally I have thought that it was possible to change properties like font type and size via a master page). I have read about it and understood that once you apply the changes to a text frame on a page, the link to the master page gets broken and you can't reverse it. So, I assumed that the same would happen with a picture frame - I didn't know that you can detach and then link it back to the master page! That's a handy feature.

Anyway, what you have suggested actually works: if I edit a picture frame in detached mode, I am able to remove the old version of the image completely! So, that fixes the problem. I think that originally, the problem happened because of the bug in updating links (in this file, the links were not updated properly by Publisher at some point and couldn't be updated via the resource manager - that's why there were multiple instances of the same file). Probably this is why the old image was not removed when a new one was placed via "replace imagage" since the old version kinda got "stuck" so I ended with two versions of the same image in one picture frame.

[thomaso]

I am glad you made your file work again and even used detaching first time successfully. Your experienced issues with resource replacements are strange but also should not make you avoid using it or suspect a general bug. Maybe there were 'just' a combination of unlucky circumstances which made it occur. Only if it happens again or even can be reproduced it becomes a serious problem and application bug.  –– EDIT: it IS reproducable under specific conditions, and got recently reported in the mac bugs forum.

2 hours ago, Vosje said:

the link to the master does get broken when you edit a text frame that was originally placed on a master page (...)
(...) adjust the font in the MASTER page, the change will not affect the text frame on the page (while originally I have thought that it was possible to change properties like font type and size via a master page)

It's true that applying a different saved text style to a master text frame will not be transferred to its child on a document page when it was edited detached. In this case you would not apply a different style to the master but instead alter the properties of the currently assigned style (via text style panel) but leave the style applied.

Note that the master frame also can be used for other properties, in particular of the frame itself. They are still linked between master and document page as long not changed when editing detached. As for instance the frame's size and position, which can be very helpful in particular if an auto-textframe gets its size auto-adjusted through an entire book when the documents margin or even page size needs to get changed. Also the more than 15 properties in the Text Frame Panel are all linked between master and document pages. So the font, among other things, is only 1 advantage of master text frames.

Edited June 11, 2020 by thomaso

[Vosje]

Thanks for your explanation!  Actually, Publisher not updating the links in a proper manner kept happening over and over again until I changed the settings to "update links automatically". Since then, it worked fine (until I discovered this problem with an image replacement - but I think it's related to the fact that it was happening previously). I am very new to Affinity so maybe it was related to only one file (and the many variations of it that I created) since the images weren't updated automatically from the start and it went wrong from the beginning. However I'm not really eager to test it further because it's a very inconvenient problem (and since updating links automatically eliminates it, I can live with that!).

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Vosje said:

Publisher not updating the links in a proper manner kept happening over and over again

Sorry, I must correct my previous post again: it obviously IS a reproducible issue and recently reported in the mac bugs forum. You can follow the thread there and don't need to make an additional bug report (in case you use Windows OS).

 

[Vosje]

Ok! Thanks for forwarding me to this thread, it's good to know this issue is under a radar, let's hope this will be fixed in a following release!